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Being and Mindfulness

By Judith Warner March 5, 2009 9:00 pmMarch 5, 2009 9:00 pm

The other night at a dinner party, a friend described how she tried to practice mindfulness meditation to keep herself from losing it during an utterly wretched seven-hour layover in an airport while she was exhausted, ill and desperate to get home to her children.

“I kept trying to be all ‘Be Here Now,’” she said, “but I just wanted to be anywhere but here.”

We all laughed.

Then she described how, on another day, she’d managed not to bite off the head of a woman who’d been gratuitously mean to her 8-year-old daughter, but instead had stayed in the moment and had connected and been able to join with the woman in an experience of their common, sadly limited, humanity.

At which point, full of congratulations (and suppressing my own story of having lost my temper with a woman in an airport bathroom who, I felt, had addressed my daughter Julia with an unforgivable tone of officiousness and disdain), I was beginning to wonder what body snatcher had taken my cranky friend away and left this kindly, calm, pod person in her place.

Where was the woman I always seek out at school events to laugh with? Where was the black humor, the sense of absurdity?

I felt strangely abandoned.

It was, I realized, my first experience of being on the receiving end of someone sharing their journey on the road to mindfulness, the meditation and life practice that’s all the rage now in psychotherapy, women’s magazines, even business journals, as a way to stay calm, manage anger and live sanely. (David Foster Wallace, too, was writing a novel all about “being in the moment and paying attention to the things that matter,” this week’s New Yorker revealed.)

In the past, I’d been only on the other side of the divide. I had, it was true, sensed a certain sadness, even feelings of betrayal, in my husband Max’s reaction to my proselytizing about my Pema Chödrön “Getting Unstuck” CD: “I never thought that you, of all people, would get into that New Age stuff,” he’d said wistfully. But I hadn’t realized that, when a person gets unstuck, the people around her can feel a bit left behind.

It has dawned on me lately, meditating on the Metro, thoughts silenced so completely that I can hear every page being turned by passengers up and down the car (I am above reading — I am present to myself) that being fully in the moment, all senses turned on, feeling your hands in your lap and the ground under your feet, is a very good way of not being there at all.

For me, this is a big part of the charm of the whole thing. I mean, it’s a lot easier to feel a loving connection to others — to the madding crowd, that is — when you’re entirely checked out. But it’s not supposed to be that way.

Mindfulness is supposed to bring people together. By embracing your essential humanness, getting in touch with and accepting your body, sensations, emotions and thoughts, you are supposed to join with, and empathetically connect to, all humanity.

“It helps to realize we are not alone,” the psychologist Mary Pipher writes in her new book, “Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World,” an account of how mindfulness meditation helped her recover from the depression and self-depletion that followed the surprise success of her huge 1994 hit, “Reviving Ophelia” and subsequent bestsellers. “One thing I like to do is send my silent good wishes to people all over the world who have problems exactly like my own. Contexts may change, but emotions are universal.”

I have no doubt that this meta-connectedness feels real, and indeed is real, in the abstract at least. But in real-life encounters, I’ve come lately to wonder whether meaningful bonds are well forged by the extreme solipsism that mindfulness practice often turns out to be.

For one thing, there’s the seemingly unavoidable problem that people who are embarked on this particular “journey of self-exploration,” as Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot. But what they don’t realize — because they’re so in the moment, caught in the wonder and fascination and totality of their self-experience — is that their stories are like dream sequences in movies, or college students’ journal entries, or the excited accounts your children bring you of absolutely hilarious moments in cartoons — you really do have to be the one who’s been there to tolerate it.

For the truth is, however admirable mindfulness may be, however much peace, grounding, stability and self-acceptance it can bring, as an experience to be shared, it’s stultifyingly boring.

I’ve also come to wonder if something desirably human is being lost in all this new and improved selfhood. That is to say: an edge. That little bit of raggedness that for some of us is really the heart of what makes us human.

Shave that piece off, soften it too mindfully, and I wonder if we don’t leave others out in the cold.

I saw this very clearly the other day, in a chance email exchange with my friend D.

She had written me to share some anxieties about the recession. They were very real and very pressing, and in the past, I would have responded with very pertinent examples of how things were much worse for me.

This time, however, tapping into great human reserves of calm and centeredness, I tried instead to lead her into staying with her feelings.

“Hang in there. Things will be O.K.,” I wrote.

D., my oldest friend, has not in the past been shy about implying that there’s something inward-looking and self-indulgent about my professed attempts at being-present-in-the-world. Now she wrote back in outrage, “What did you do with the real Judy? Did you just tell me to hang in there, things will be O.K????”

“It is comforting to me when people say things like that, sorry. SORRY!” I screamed back. “There, is that O.K.?”

And it was O.K. The connection — 43 years of happy shouting — was restored.

Some of us experience our emotions always in capital letters and exclamation points. This isn’t always pleasant but, to go all mindful for a moment, it is what it is, and if you are one of these people then probably one of the great pleasures of your life is finding others like you and settling in with them for a good rant. A world devoid of such souls can be cold and forbidding, and above all terribly, terribly dull.

It is selfish, undoubtedly, to want to hold onto the ragged edges that make me feel genuinely connected, not perhaps to humanity, but to the people I love. But then, the fact is, I can probably beat Mary Pipher hands down at being the worst Buddhist in the world.

The friend who told you how good she was in the airport and how restrained she’d been in the presence of her daughter’s offender had funny stories to share as a result of her aspirations to mindfulness. I don’t think you lost her. Those who are too mindful would have no stories to share . . . .

In my experience, those people whose need to seek mindfulness is so great that they tune out everything that is going on around them are usually pretty misguided about their actual footprint in the world around them. They are not only boring; they are often annoying, insensitive and downright obtuse. Coming from a family of born-again Buddhists, I simply cannot stand the philosophy as practiced by ignorant westerners.

They are rare Buddhists, but I think they must exist, who can appreciate what their achievement actually represents.

This is hilarious! I get fed up with all this New Age calmness too, especially when I KNOW that the world is going to hell in a handbasket!! Maybe it won’t be ok!!! Maybe humans will be extinct soon!!! Is THAT OK?!?

Then I discovered the meta-mindfulness guru: Byron Katie. Now, her twist on all this calmness is to say: Reality rules. Arguing with it makes you unhappy and stressed. But maybe a lot of it is none of your business. That right there goes a long way toward getting rid of some worries. When you get right down to it, most of the stuff you worry about is other people’s business, or what she calls God’s business, which are things like hurricanes, etc. Reality.

When somebody says to BK something like, “I don’t like racial prejudice,” she says, “What planet do you think we live on? We’re not supposed to be prejudiced? But we are, sometimes. That’s reality.” Essentially: butt your head up against it over and over, or just agree that, yes, ,for now it is reality. What next? Which feels more empowering: to say, “Oh, no, I lost my job, and I shouldn’t have; it’s not fair…” or to say, “The reality is, I lost my job. Now what?”

I have been using this a lot lately. The reality is, my neighbor is psycho. Now what? Maybe I’ll just avoid her. It’s ok. My idea of what’s “spiritual” is that I should spend time with her even though she’s really difficult: BK would ask, “is that true?” Well, I don’t know. Maybe I don’t have to be friends with everybody.

The funny thing is, once you start questioning your “story,” you find that you just ARE more mindful without making any special effort. What interferes with being present is all that chatter in your mind about the fact that, for example, you should be more present!

The point is that wanting to be spiritual and calm and “good” can be just another stressor. Trying to live up to your own and other people’s ideas about what is the mellow, New Age, mindful way to be may just make you feel worse about yourself. How about asking yourself the question: “I should be more mindful. Is it true?” My answer is: I don’t know.

Having just gotten back from my mindfullness class, I can say that understanding and controlling our limitations as humans is the ultimate and only reason for existing- and midfullness practice is one way to achieve this clearing. It looks beyond the constant human reacting and ruminations that run our minds and lives. It teaches freedom from anxiety and self suffering that humans impose on themselves just because of our cranial hardware- we are making it all up as we go. What if what happens, is nothing more then that- what if we totally accept what happpens and if we give up intrepetations and reactions to what happens- That is freedom- the ultimate Nirvana.

Try to find Pema Chodron’s discussion of cool vs hot boredom. Meditation, as is taught by Buddhists, does not make one serene and sweet, necessarily. It makes one real. Mindfulness/awareness meditation includes everything, from tumultuous emotions to boredom, to sleepiness, to itchiness, to inquisitiveness, and tuning out. It doesn’t rule out anything. Avoidance is counterintuitive to awareness. I find that the people I know who are “shinjanged” with meditation (cooled out) are anything but boring. They are anything but pod people. They are funny, edgy, quick, connected, bright, and all kinds of other good stuff. Just keep sitting, Judith. You’ll see.

You are equating mindfulness with inauthenticity, but they’re not the same. You can be yourself – emotional-yelly-puctuationy – and still be mindful. It doesn’t require keeping some expression of Oprah-sanctioned beatitude on your face.

Well, you cannot declare yourself the winner of that contest, Judith. There are many of us out here who will challenge you and some of us will win it with way more hands down than you. Even the hands down in our laps, trying to meditate, and staying completely rubber band tight. Meditating gives us chest pains. We’re much happier screaming at the attendant who knows nothing at the airport and huffing with outrage while we stand endlessly in line. The School of Buddhism would kick us out before the first recess. Want to join our club? No slow cleansing breaths. Turn your OMMMs into AARRGGHHs. Human beings were not meant to be calm.

Let go/don’t let go. There’s an asteroid out there that could care less. Eat what you want, dance, zone, scream etc. There’s just no real upside in letting other mammals prescribe what’s best for anyone but themselves. The last thing we need is less diversity and personal responsibility – or not. Glad to hear you letting go of letting go…

I don’t think the idea of mindfulness is supposed to imply falseness. The question isn’t, “are you saying happy, cheerful, generous things?” but more like, “are you speaking from what is really going on with you right now or just on a head trip?”

Regardless of whether your falseness is false niceness (trying to smooth everything over but really being detached) or false drama (being too into “the fascinating story of me” to notice the very everyday yet remarkable experience of being), the problem is the falseness.

Being mindful to me is simply being real. I don’t interact with life from a place of my carefully formulated thoughts, my calculated manners, my wise calm and equipoise, because isn’t that the most highly evolved I can be. I don’t have a way of speach or reaction that one can say either is like me or not like me, at least not one that is at all conscious or intentional. I’m sure there are common patterns, but that is irrelevant to me. What I care about is simply letting my honest reactions come out as they arise in the moment, each moment, and discovering who I am as an unfolding story in my life instead of a scripting part in my head. I hope this is making sense.

For me, mindfulness is like a walk in a meadow on a sunny but crisp Spring day, and the absence of mindfulness is like a soap opera I watch all day every day. I don’t need a fascinating, dynamic, smart, sassy, witty, original story full of insight and charm. I’ll gladly take the everyday joy of the breeze on my skin, the sun in my forehead, the breath as I exhale, and even on the dreariest day, the smile that spreads across my face, for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

The “edge” to which Ms. Warner refers is simply acknowledgment, according to one’s spontaneous, honest perceptions, of a reality –in contradistinction to the acknowledgment that there may be conflict between self and acknowledgment of reality.

The problem here is that some people seem to think that their assessment of reality is not as important or valuable as their assessment of themselves.

How sad that edge and complaining is valued…did you ever think about how much time and energy are wasted by attacking, blaming and criticizing….I love mindfulness (not that I have it all the time) because my stomach hurts less, I have fewer headaches, less remorse, and not as much guilt….I do hope this article is supposed to be sarcastic…..Carolyn Shawgo

Your column is a guilty pleasure of mine. No, rephrase: just a pleasure.

At 50, the arc of my life is what it is. Professional success (as in: nobody elses’s problem), decent relationships across time and distance, overcoming the death of my son, Jasper, who died of cancer way-too-young at 24 …. I cry 3 times a day, and I’m a fairly tough guy.

Sorry there ….

I am all about introspection and self-questioning, but I, for one, tend to shout a lot, and to good end.

I am not a buddhist or an expert at meditation. What I am is a professional musician who has off and on practiced mindfulness meditation. From what you describe of your friend it seems she is play acting and is then getting an ego high telling her friends how enlightened she is. To get the point where your friend was not play acting and to truly become what she pretends to be would take years and years of rigorous meditation.

I may be totally off the mark here , but as a 26 old who continues to try and master my instrument, I can say that mindfulness is all about increasing your awareness of yourself; in order for that to happen you have to practice observing/listening to yourself. Listening is the key word here; the more you do it the better you get and eventually you realize how undisciplined our minds are darting from thought to thought to thought. I find even the small amount of meditation I do from time to time helps clear my mind which allows me to enjoy living my life now rather being trapped in thought about the future or the past. I like having fun too a I love passionate music; I see meditation as helping provide the clarity and focus of mind so that I can be more engaged in the music. A mind that is clouded with worries or cluttered with random thoughts is not able to enjoy the finer things in life.

Taken together, the last two sentences show that you absolutely get the point without actually realizing that you do. And that’s what’s so very sad.

People who study Buddhism work very hard at their practice precisely because what they want more than anything is true happiness. Actually, that’s not accurate. Buddhists don’t want happiness; they want ultimate bliss. You’ve hit on the head why the majority will never understand this: because they’re just like you are. They “just don’t want to let go” of their suffering. It’s all you know. You can’t imagine who you’d be without your suffering,

Implicit in the conversations you used to have with your “school events” friend with whom you laughed and looked for “black humor” and a “sense of absurdity” is that you may feel as if you seemed urbane and smart, taking the term “smart” in the way that people say, “She dresses so smartly.” Looking for “black humor” or the absurd isn’t smart at all. When you laugh at others, seek out “black humor” and a “sense of absurdity” to put down those around you, and do so precisely because the suffering you’re addicted to makes you feel so horrible about yourself that without realizing it putting down others makes you feel better about yourself.

The juxtaposition of conflict, of what you think you know about mindfulness and that you “just don’t want to let go” may seem smart. But it’s not.

That is the major challenge with mindfulness/buddhist revolution – trying to be something you are not. There are other buddhist traditions that are not about squelching your rage, black humor or for that matter your humanity. SGI Nichiren (www.sgi-usa.org) for example, if fully investigated is entirely about manifesting your inherent buddha nature AS YOU ARE.

Thank you for your thoughts. I find myself wanting to prosletize my parents, reasoning that meditation/Buddhism would be just the thing to help my mother aware of her anger and fear, and help my dad get out of his head and into his heart. They don’t say much in response, but their quizzical, bemused looks tell me “Our son has become a nut.”

Well I suppose that’s what mindfulness can seem like on the surface–stripping people of the full range of expression. But mindfulness is *exactly* about being fully in the moment with all the “emotions in capital letters and exclamation points” and everything else that comes with the human experience–not just striving to be serene and detached. Being mindful doesn’t mean you’re a checked-out ocean of watery blandness who tries to sidestep her thoughts and feelings. That seems to be the quickest route to unhappiness. It is continuing to being mindful of the “ragged edges” that inspires me to continue with the practice at all. The tears, the squirming, the impatience with sitting with all that’s bombarding me in the moment. To me, the point of a personal mindfulness practice to me is to be fully human–rough edges included.

Irascibility is so underrated, and beats the snot out of all that navel-gazing pseudo-forebearance. Here’s how to deal on occasion:

I was slightly rotten the other day. Slightly. After filling my tank at the gas station at a busy intersection this afternoon, I got into my car and wrote the mileage down on the receipt as is my habit. A car that had pulled facing me in honked. Really, it couldn’t have been 15 seconds after I got in the car. ‘Well, pardon me for taking up 10 whole seconds of your time writing down my mileage; this is how I do things,’ I thought. So, perversely, I sl-ow-ly put the receipt and pencil away in the glove box. Then I fluffed my hair, licked my lips, and switched from my reading to my sunglasses. Took out the keys, for which I rummaged rather theatrically, and then – – – and then I had a last-minute passive-aggressive inspiration. I took out a lipstick – too bad I didn’t have mascara, too – primped in the rear-view mirror, and and smiled at myself. I pulled away, an eyebrow cocked at the peeved driver (this was pointless, I had sunglasses on): “the lipstick was for you honking at me.”

Great! I’ve read a stack of books about Buddhism. They all recommend meditation as essential and important. Of course I tried it and never got into it. Observing my thoughts dispassionately, letting my feelings flow over me, and so on, when I was honest with myself, seemed to be doing the opposite of what it was supposed to: getting rid of my small self to join with everyone. Instead I found it to be uncomfortably self-centered. The best way to open yourself to others, to be sensitive and aware and getting rid of the distortions from your defenses, I now think, is to avoid thinking about myself and focus on others. It seems too obvious: the way to feel part of the whole is to stop thinking, “Now, I’m thinking that I’m part of the whole.” It’s like learning to ride a bike by thinking about it, rather than doing it.

You know, Buddhism is prevalent in parts of the world where the good of the individual comes below the good of society. Perhaps that’s why mindfulness does well there- people are already rooted in their social relationships, duties, support systems and hierarchies. Mindfulness is a good counterweight to all that, but their societies assure that they will always be grounded in their social obligations; they won’t get lost in themselves. Perhaps our society is already too individual-oriented. Mindfulness is attractive to an individual-oriented society like ours, but without something to keep us firmly tied to society and societal obligations, it causes us to get carried away, like an unanchored ship at high tide.

Perhaps mindfulness is something that should be taken as part of a larger whole and without that whole- our grounding in society- it’s best avoided. My wife is a Thai Buddhist, and I spent three years in South East Asia. All I can say is New Age versions of Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness are based upon something very different than Asia versions. They are good things for members of Asian cultures and they can be of benefit to us. But we have to be much more careful in how we use them.

It sounds to me that the problem isn’t mindfulness per se, but the people who wield it like a cudgel and make a public thing out of it. I always got the impression this sort of thing worked better when it was simply embodied as a principle — when it was invisibly effective, and not being used as a way to score points with others.

Literally hundreds of clinical research trials have shown that mindfulness can alleviate symptoms of dozens of psychological and physical disorders. As a part of Buddhism, mindfulness has helped untold numbers of people drastically reduce their suffering. Alongside your casting of mindfulness as something weird, less “human” people do, it may be worth reminding people of these facts, especially given the size of your audience and the fact that you may be turning off scores of people who could actually benefit greatly from the practice.

Also, your point about mindfulness leading to “extreme solipsism” is philosophically and psychologically just plain incorrect. Such a royal cognitive error is odd coming from an intelligent person.